Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Wireless networks are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. It is often desirable to provide playback of multiple audio and visual channels in a networked environment. In particular, there is perceived consumer desire for high quality wireless speakers systems. For such systems, the individual multimedia devices need to be synchronized, typically with the accuracy of a few microseconds. Failure to accurately synchronize devices often results in the production of unwanted playback effects.
Some synchronization techniques rely on frequency synchronizing a server and a client local clock within devices that are connected to a shared medium, with reference to a separate global clock observable by all devices coupled to that wireless network. However, wired networks typically do not have an observable global clock, as switch devices typically isolate the individual carriers to avoid collisions. Therefore these techniques are substantially isolated to topologies where the devices are connected to a shared medium.
There is a need in the art for improved systems and methods for synchronization in a networked environment.